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The  Call  System 

VERSUS 

The  Single  Tax 


Thesis  from  a  Chapter  of  Vokime  III  of 
^VORLD  QUESTION  AXD  ITS  ANSWER 
The  Solution  of  the  Problem  of  War 
By  loTiN  E.  Bennett 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


a  nation  to  be  free,  it  i=  vuffident  that  she  wills  it.— Lafayette. 


1918 

MENLO  PT'BLISHING  COMPANY 

246  Russ  Building 

San  Francisco,  Cal. 


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The  Call  System 

VERSUS 

The  Single  Tax 


A  Thesis  from  a  Chapter  of  Volume  III  of 

THE  WORLD  QUESTION  AND  ITS  ANSWER 

The  Solution  of  the  Problem  of  War 

By  John  E.  Bennett 
of  the 
San  Francisco  Bar 


* 


For  a  nation  to  be  free,  it  is  sufficient  that  she  wills  it. — Lafayette. 


1918 

MENLO  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

246  Russ  Building 

San  Francisco,  Cal. 

San  Francisco 


jfc^-iMfc-^-^i^^il^^'^-'iil^-jt'^^j^jil^-^j^^ 


THE  ENORMOUS  PRODUCTIVE  POWER  OF  SOCIETY   SHOWN 
BY   ITS  WASTE 

There  are  more  men  confronting  each  other  on  the  European  front  witk 
the  purpose  of  murder  than  there  are  men  in  the  United  States — the  total 
adult  male  population  of  this  enormous  republic  is  not  so  great  as  the  num- 
ber of  armed  men  upon  the  battle  front ;  and  these  men  are  supplemented  by 
great  armies  of  reserves  behind  them,  prepared  to  support  their  efforts,  and 
there  are  still  larger  armies  at  home,  making  so  many  people  engaged  that 
it  means  taking  out  of  the  productive  life  of  the  world  perhaps  as  many 
people  as  there  are  in   the  United  States. 

Are  you  conscious,  gentlemen,  of  what  it  means  that  while  there  are 
people  starving  and  suffering  from  cold,  and  in  other  ways,  in  all  of  these 
countries,  far  beyond  anything  we  have  experienced  yet,  nevertheless  they 
are  somehow  living,  and  the  world  is  somehow  going  on,  and  that,  so  far  as 
Atlantic  commerce  is  concerned  it  may  be  said  to  be  in  almost  a  flourishing 
condition,  while  the  great  bulk  of  the  skilled  labor  of  all  these  civilized 
countries  is  taken  out  of  productive  enterprise?  Gentlemen,  the  incompe- 
tency of  the  system  of  industry  that  preceded  this  war  is  simply  beyond  the 
possibility  of  human  description.  That  the  world  could  go  on  at  all,  with 
the  bulk  of  its  best  men  engaged  in  destruction,  and  with  millions  of  women 
unaccustomed  to  labor  pressed  into  service  for  the  war,  reveals  the  greatest 
economic  scandal  of  history ;  and  if  it  does  not  open  our  eyes  to  a  recon- 
structed  world   we   are   certainly   devoid  of  the   capacity   of  vision. 

CHARLES  ZUEBLIN, 
Before  the  National  Economic  League. 


THE  COMING  GENERAL  CHANGE 

The  vast  majority  of  our  people  •  ♦  *  feel  keenly  the  inequalities 
and  injustices  which  too  often  afflict  their  lives.  They  also  are  conscious 
that,  for  the  most  part,  the  leaders  of  public  thought,  religious,  moral  or 
political,  have  failed  to  make  any  real  attempt  to  solve  the  problems  that 
confront  and  afflict  them.  There  are  some  *  •  *  who  are  proclaiming  a 
policy  of  despair.  They  have  looked,  they  tell  us,  in  various  directions  for 
a  solution  to  the  problem  in  vain.  They  are  compelled  to  the  unwelcome 
conclusion  ♦hat  the  exi!«;;irrg  con.litio.is  of  society  are  incapable  of  being  rem- 
edied,   and    that    things    catin^^t    'c».e    worse    than    they    are    at    present    time. 

*  *     *     Our  worl^ers  tend  to  be  resentful   and   suspicious  of  public  authori- 
ties an4  pdlttic^l  l<3iaJers.     They  &ri  questioning  the  whole  system  of  society. 

There  is,  in  short,  a  general  change  in  the  mind  of  the  Nation.  Few 
suppose  that  after  the  war  the  social  order  will  automatically  adjust  itself. 
Most  realize  that  we  must  make  a  combined  and  determined  effort  to  right  it. 

The  leading  features  of  the  modern  labor  unrest  are:  Its  passion  for 
fair  treatment  and  for  liberty;  its  resentment  at  bureaucratic  interference 
with  family  life;  its  desire  for  self-realization  and  opportunities  for  education. 

*  *     *     Cordial   co-operation   among  all   classes   are  necessary   if   their  ideals 
are  to  be  realized. 

CARDINAL   BOURNE   (London). 


Copyright  1918  by  E.  J.  Bennett 


THE  WORLD  QUESTION  AND  ITS  ANSWER 


THE   SOLUTION   OF  THE   PROBLEM   OF   WAR 

By  John  E.  Bennett 

(Publisher's  Note) 

There  is  in  San  P'rancisco  the  manuscript  of  a 
book  bearing  the  above  title.  It  is  in  five  volumes, 
the  first  two  of  which  are  ready  for  the  printer 
and  are  planned  to  appear  under  one  cover.  The 
other  three  volumes  will  follow  in  succession.*  The 
book  presents  the  solution  of  the  problem  of  war, 
which  includes  the  problem  of  peace,  with  its  sev- 
eral questions  of  business  hard  times,  industrial 
unrest,  unemployment,  poverty,  etc.  The  author 
shows,  by  sociological  analyses,  how  a  single  na- 
tion by  the  enactment  of  .a  measure,  and  repealing 
various  inconsistent  laws,  may  set  up  within  itself 
an  order  in  society  which  would  automatically 
cause  war  to  disappear  from  the  world.  It  is  not 
contemplated  that  it  would  stop  the  present  war, 


*The  subject  is  divided  in  the  several  volumes  into  sub- 
heads as  follows: 

Vol.  I:  The  Forces  Which  Integrate  Society.  Vol.  II: 
The  Forces  Which  Disintegrate  Society.  Vol.  Ill:  The  Forces 
by  which  Society  is  Preserved  and  Its  Progress  Compelled. 
Vol.  IV  Erroneous  Endeavors  to  Defend  Against  the  Forces 
Disintegrating  Society.  Vol.  V:'  Ineffectual  Efforts  to  Com- 
prehend Society  and  to  Perceive  the  Forces  Which  Tend  to 
Its  Making  and  Unmaking. 


373602 


which  apparently  must  be  prosecuted  until  the  Ger- 
man people  are  forced  to  get  rid  of  the  military 
group  and  establishment  which  rules  them.  But 
excepting  this,  it  would  remove  all  other  objectives 
for  continuing  the  war.  It  would  automatically 
effect  the  several  purposes  asserted  by  President 
Wilson  as  the  aims  of  the  Allies,  and  it  would 
possess  the  Allies  with  an  enormous  revenue,  in 
the  United  States  the  sum  of  five  billions  of  dollars 
per  year,  wholly  applicable  to  war  purposes  and 
which  it  does  not  harm,  but  immensely  benefits, 
business  for  the  government  to  take.  In  other 
words,  what  Mr.  Bennett  does  is  to  show  us  the 
way  to  make  society  100  per  cent  cooperative,  in- 
stead of  less  than  40  per  cent  as  it  is  today;  and 
in  doing  this  war,  and  all  other  untoward  phe- 
nomena of  society  automatically  disappears. 

But  the  most  startling  thing  of  all  which  Mr. 
Bennett  shows  is  that  the  prevailing  sociological 
system — which  he  calls  the  Protective  Spirit  or 
System — has  been  necessary  in  the  course  of  hu- 
man progress,  a  natural  vehicle  for  the  advance- 
ment of  civilization;  but  that  it  has  now  accom- 
plished its  purpose  and  spent  its  beneficial  force. 
Henceforth  it  can  only  work  injury  and  must  be 
accompanied  by  practically  continuous  war.  Its 
essential  is  Privilege,  while  that  which  Mr.  Bennett 
shows  is  based  on  freedom  and  equal  right. 

This  capital  problem  of  the  human  race  which 

4 


has  engaged  the  thought  of  philosophic  writers 
for  centuries,  has  been  worked  out  here  in  San 
Francisco.  Its  meditation  required  six  consecu- 
tive years  of  the  author's  time,  to  the  practical 
exclusion  of  his  income-producing  legal  profession. 
Many  millions  of  dollars  have  been  set  aside  by 
endowments  and  other  endeavors  to  aid  in  finding 
the  solution  of  this  problem.  It  is  the  peculiar 
irony  of  fate  that  the  man  who  actually  did  the 
work  never  received  any  assistance  to  sustain  him 
in  his  long  and  arduous  task,  but  was  compelled  to 
struggle  with  his  problem  amidst  the  importuni- 
ties of  creditors;  and  now  that  the  labor  is  done 
he  is  unable  to  print  his  book  and  so  present  it  to 
the  world — a  world  which  is  in  death  agony, 
"bleeding  white,"  for  lack  of  the  knowledge  which 
it  contains. 

It  is  a  part  of  the  purpose  of  the  publication 
of  this  thesis,  a  condensation  of  one  of  the  chap- 
ters of  the  third  volume,  to  call  attention  to  the 
existence  of  the  book,  in  order  that  the  people  of 
the  Nation,  through  forwarding  their  subscrip- 
tions to  the  part  which  is  ready  to  issue,  may  not 
suffer  the  knowledge  to  be  suppressed. 

As  it  was  necessary  in  proceeding  with  the 
analyses  through  which  the  sociology  shown  by 
Mr.  Bennett  has  been  evolved  to  designate  the 
order  he  reveals  by  some  name,  he  speaks  of  it  as 
the  Call  System  in  contradistinction  to  the  Pro- 


tective  System,  to  which  we  have  alluded.  The 
Call  System  is  simply  orderly  use,  by  the  units  of 
society,  of  the  earth,  and  is  effected  through  the 
State  laying  such  a  charge  upon  each  piece  of 
valuable  land  as  would  cause  it  to  be  used  to  its 
full  volume  of  possible  efficiency.  This  does  not 
injure  the  landowner,  but  greatly  enriches  him. 
Such  being  the  method  of  effecting  the  Call  System 
it  has  been  mistaken  by  many  who  have  heard  Mr. 
Bennett  lecture,  for  the  Single  Tax.  But  the  two 
are  radically  different,  and  it  is  to  show  that  dis- 
tinction that  the  following  thesis  is  presented. 


The  Difference  Between  tke 
Call  System  and  tke  Single  Tax 

By  John  E.  Bennett 

HE  Single  Tax  was  devised  by  its 
founder,  Henry  George,  to  be  a  socio- 
logical reform  that  would  abolish  pov- 
erty on  one  hand,  and  prevent  upon  the 
other  the  plethoric  and  pathological  accumulations 
of  wealth  in  individuals — a  manifestly  morbid  se- 
cretion of  adipose  upon  the  social  body — which 
characterize  present-day  civilization. 

Mr.  George  located  the  cause  of  the  trouble  in 
the  pressure  of  rent  against  wages.  In  stating  this 
he  says : 

"The  reason  why,  in  spite  of  the  increase 
of  productive  power,  wages  constantly  tend  to 
a  minimum  which  will  give  but  a  bare  living, 
is  that,  with  increase  in  productive  power,  rent 
tends  to  even  greater  increase,  thus  producing 
a  constant  tendency  to  the  forcing  down  of 
wages."    Progress  and  Poverty,  p.  243. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  this  statement  is  exactly 
true.  The  landowner  gives  nothing  for  what  he 
gets — only  his  permission  that  the  earth  may  be 
used.  If  he  gave  potatoes  or  something  else  for 
what  he  receives,  his  power  to  take  would  be  lim- 

7 


ited  by  his  power  to  give;  but  giving  nothing,  his 
capacity  for  taking  is  unlimited.  Unless,  there- 
fore, there  were  some  influence  in  society  to  hold 
him  back  he  would  take  the  whole  yield  of  indus- 
try— for  all  industry  must  operate  upon  the  earth. 
He  is  held  back  by  the  requisites  of  industry  itself. 
Unless  capital  can  receive  a  certain  interest  it  will 
not  lend  itself  to  industry;  unless  profit  be  suffi- 
cient to  make  the  enterprise  ''attractive"  the  entre- 
preneur will  not  install  it  or  continue  to  conduct  it. 
Unless  labor  can  receive  enough  wages  to  subsist 
it  will  not  work  in  the  industry.  All  of  these  ele- 
ments, therefore,  must  be  paid  from  the  industry 
before  rent  can  receive  its  toll.  But  there  is  upon 
them  all  a  constant  pressure  of  rent.  This  is  not 
generally  apparent  as  a  sociological  force.  It  does 
not  always  manifest  itself  by  the  landlord  raising 
the  rent  of  land,  for  the  entrepreneur  may  own  the 
land.  It  shows  itself  in  rising  prices  which  move 
demands  for  increased  wages,  which  in  turn  in- 
crease prices,  which  make  slack  markets,  which 
throw  men  out  of  industry  and  produce  a  pressure 
of  application  for  jobs  at  the  door  of  industry.  So 
the  labor  union  is  forced  to  do  two  things:  To 
make  wages  fixed  and  uniform  like  interest,  and 
to  hold  away  the  unemployed  man. 

All  this  is  caused  by  the  ever  rising  price  of 
rent  and  the  sale  price  of  land,  just  as  industry 
rises.    Let  initiative  bring  forward  any  new  facil- 

8 


ity — electric  light,  the  automobile,  and  land  price 
in  rent  or  sale  at  once  moves  up  to  take  in  all  the 
slack  of  wealth  which  the  new  thought  has  gen- 
erated. This  is  not  altogether  or  always  the  land- 
owner's fault.  Competing  entrepreneurs  will  bid 
against  each  other,  bid  up  the  price  for  access  to 
the  land,  and  the  landowner  has  often  only  the 
matter  of  accepting  the  highest.  So  that  industry 
is  pressed  by  rent,  not  only  upon  the  land  which 
a  given  enterprise  may  occupy,  but  by  that  which 
goes  on  everywhere  else.  If  Jones  who  tans  hides 
must  give  more  for  a  piece  of  land  for  his  tannery 
than  he  could  have  gotten  it  for  a  year  ago,  he 
must,  unless  his  costs  be  otherwise  reduced,  charge 
more  for  his  leather.  Jacobs  the  baker  must  pay 
more  for  boots  and  he  must  have  more  wages  to 
enable  him  to  do  it.  Higher  wages  for  Jacobs 
means  higher  price  for  bread,  and  Jenkins  who 
eats  bread  must  pay  more  for  that  as  well  as  for 
boots,  so  he  must  have  more  wages  from  the  iron 
foundry  where  he  works,  and  so  on.  The  effect 
of  all  this  is  to  narrow  industry  and  throw  men 
into  unemployment,  which  is  famine;  so  that  we 
have  the  rising  price  of  rent  and  land  tending 
to  narrow  industry,  prevent  its  increase,  to  shut 
away  from  the  earth  such  of  industry  as  exists. 
It  was  for  this  reason  that  prior  to  the  outbreak 
of  the  war  16  per  cent  of  the  used  land  of  England 
had  in  twenty-five  years  reverted  to  pasture,  and 

9 


30  per  cent  of  the  population  of  England  was  in 
famine. 

The  discernment  by  Mr.  George  of  the  cause 
of  the  evil  was  clearly  right,  and  I  believe  this 
perception,  though  forecast  by  Mill,  Ricardo  and 
others,  had  not  been  fully  appreciated  before  Mr. 
George  made  it.  Though  announced  forty  years 
ago  it  is  very  far  from  being  understood  at  the 
present  day,  though  like  all  sociological  science,  it 
is  extremely  simple.  It  was  not  in  the  perception 
of  the  character  of  the  evil  that  Mr.  George  made 
the  mistakes  we  shall  hereafter  note,  but  in  his 
assignment  of  what  he  believed  the  cause  of  the 
phenomenon  he  observed,  and  in  the  remedy  he 
proposed.  His  conclusion  was  that  the  trouble 
was  due  to  the  institution  of  private  property  in 
land,  and  his  remedy  was  that  this  institution 
should  be  abolished. 

He  would  return  man,  in  effect,  to  that  rela- 
tion to  the  land  which  the  individual  bore  in  sav- 
agery and  barbarism,  when  land  was  not  owned 
by  the  person;  only  the  nation  owned  the  land, 
and  all  in  the  tribe  were  free  to  draw  from  it  sub- 
sistence as  they  would.  The  certain  deferences 
which  Mr.  George  made  to  civilization,  and  to 
ownership  in  allodium,  land  parcelled  in  severalty, 
in  that  he  would  not  dispossess  the  occupant,  only 
confiscate  rent  which  he  treated  as  issuing  from  a 
value  which  was  "unearned  increment,^'  in  no  wise 

10 


vitiated  this  reversionary  project.  For  the  State 
to  absorb  the  whole  of  rent  was  for  the  State  to 
own  the  whole  of  land.  It  was  Mr.  George's  con- 
cept, therefore,  that  the  trouble  with  society  was 
that  rent  was  not  divided  up.  It  seemed  to  him 
that  if  this  fund  was  taken  and  distributed  to  all 
and  sundry  in  something  approximating,  perhaps, 
equal  proportions,  that  the  unearned  increment 
thus  being  returned  to  society,  the  pressure  of  rent 
against  industry  would  be  relieved  and  all  would 
be  right.  The  way  it  would  be  relieved  would  not 
be  altogether  by  lessening  its  tension,  but  by  easing 
the  circumstances  of  those  upon  whom  it  bore  by 
dividends  apportioned  from  the  common  fund. 
This  was  the  basis  of  Mr.  George's  doctrine  of 
distributing  rent  through  the  State's  taking.  We 
have  the  idea  expressed  today  by  the  Single  Taxers 
in  their  Single  Tax  Review  ( March- April,  1914), 
viz. : 

*'■■  ''The  single  tax  is  an  instrument  for  effect- 
ing the  resumption  of  social  wealth  for  social 
needs — not  merely  for  the  needs  of  government 
as  now  administered,  but  going  beyond  it,  if 
necessary,  in  order  to  take  all  the  land  value." 

To  carry  out  this  idea  Mr.  George  announced 
what  seemed  to  him  a  perfectly  axiomatic  asser- 
tion. We  find  it  stated  on  page  289  of  Progress 
and  Poverty,  as  follows: 

"If  we  are  all  here  by  the  equal  permission 
of  the  Creator,  we  are  all  here  with  an  equal 

11 


title  to  the  enjoyment  of  His  bounty — with  an 
equal  right  to  the  use  of  all  that  nature  so  im-)^^ 
partially  offers.  This  is  a  right  which  is  nat- 
ural and  inalienable ;  it  is  a  right  which  vests  in 
every  human  being  as  he  enters  the  world,  and 
which  during  his  continuance  in  the  world  can 
be  limited  only  by  the  equal  rights  of  others. 
There  is  in  nature  no  such  thing  as  a  fee  simple 
in  land.  There  is  on  earth  no  power  which  can 
rightfully  make  a  grant  of  exclusive  ownership 
in  land.  If  all  existing  men  were  to  unite  to 
grant  away  their  equal  rights,  they  could  not 
grant  away  the  right  of  those  who  follow  them. 
For  what  are  we  but  tenants  for  a  day?  Have 
we  made  the  earth,  that  we  should  determine 
the  rights  of  those  who  after  us  shall  tenant  it 
in  their  turn?  The  Almighty,  who  created  the 
earth  for  man  and  man  for  the  earth,  has  en- 
tailed it  upon  all  the  generations  of  the  chil- 
dren of  men  by  a  decree  written  upon  the  con- 
stitution of  all  things  —  a  decree  which  no 
human  action  can  bar  and  no  prescription  deter- 
mine. Let  the  parchments  be  ever  so  many, 
or  possession  ever  so  long,  natural  justice  can 
recognize  no  right  in  one  man  to  the  posses- 
sion and  enjoyment  of  land  that  is  not  equally 
the  right  of  all  his  fellows.  Though  his  titles 
have  been  acquiesced  in  by  generation  after 
generation,  to  the  landed  estates  of  the  Duke 
of  Westminster  the  poorest  child  that  is  born 
in  London  today  has  as  much  right  as  has  his 
eldest  son.  Though  the  sovereign  people  of 
the  State  of  New  York  consent  to  the  landed 
possessions  of  the  Astors,  the  puniest  infant 
that  comes  wailing  into  the  world  in  the  squal- 
idest  room  of  the  most  miserable  tenement 
house,  becomes  at  that  moment  seized  of  an 
equal  right  with  the  millionaires.  And  it  is 
robbed  if  the  right  is  denied." 


12 


Surely  a  doctrine  could  not  be  set  forth  in  lan- 
guage more  emphatic,  nor  its  principle  more  clearly 
enunciated. 

When  we  come  to  the  Platform  we  find  this 

doctrine  split  into  two  parts  wherein  the  second 

of  the  postulates  shows  forth,  that  is,  (1)  all  men^ 

are  equally  entitled  to  the  earth,  and  (2)  all  meuv^ 

are  equally  entitled  to  the  value  of  land — the  social 

value.     Mr.  George  opens  his  Platform  with  this 

statement,  and  all  that  follows  flows  from  it,  viz.: 

"We   assert   as   our   fundamental    principle 
the  self-evident  truth  enunciated  in  the  Declar- 
ation of  American  Independence,  that  all  men^ 
are   created   equal    and    are    endowed   by   their  V 
Creator    with    certain    inalienable    rights.      We  -^ 
hold  that  all   men  are   equally  entitled   to  the 
use   and   enjoyment  of  what   God   has   created 
and  of  what  is  gained  by  the  general  growth 
and  improvement  of  the  community  of  which 
they  are  a  part.     Therefore,  no  one  should  be 
permitted   to   hold   natural   opportunities   with- 
out a  fair  return  to  all  for  any  special  privilege 
thus  accorded  to  him,  and  that  value  which  the 
growth  and  improvement  of  the  community  at- 
taches to  land  should  be  taken  for  the  use  of 
the  community;  that  each  is  entitled  to  all  that  v' 
his  labor  produces;  therefore,  no  tax  should  be  ■*- 
levied  on  the  products  of  labor."  '*" 

This  leads  Mr.  George  into  the  field  of  his  con- 
cept of  the  cause  of  that  body  of  sociological  dis- 
turbance which  he  perceived,  namely,  poverty  and 
excessive  wealth,  and  the  remedy  therefor.  We 
find  here  two  objects  through  which  the  tax  is 
taken;  one  asserts  that 

13 


"No  one  should  be  permitted  to  hold  nat- 
y   ural  opportunities  without  a  fair  return  to  all." 

And  the  other  that 

"That    value    which    the    growth    and    im- 
provement  of   the   community   attaches   to   the 
X         land  should  be  taken  for  the  use  of  the  com- 
munity." 

If  the  origin  of  the  value  of  land  be  as  above, 
being  that  which  is  attached  to  land  by  the  growth 
and  improvement  of  the  commmiity,  that  is,  soci- 
ety, how  "all"  are  to  receive  their  "fair  return" 
through  taking  of  land  value  for  "the  use  of  the 
community"  is  not  apparent  from  the  Platform, 
unless  we  are  to  infer  that  the  phrase  "the  com- 
munity" includes  both  the  State  and  the  citizen, 
which  in  fact,  as  is  well  known,  was  precisely  what 
Mr.  George  intended. 

That  he  intended  this  is  manifest  from  the  fact 
that  he  proposed  that  the  entire  volume  of  land 
should  be  absorbed  from  the  landowner.  Mr. 
George's  purpose  in  this  is  to  divest  the  landowner 
of  ownership  of  his  land.  Were  it  requisite  or 
even  desirable  in  effecting  this  he  would  dispossess 
him  entirely.  Such,  however,  is  not  needful.  Mr. 
George  has  another  way  of  attaining  the  same  end. 
What  this  is  he  makes  very  clear.  On  pp.  347-8-9 
of  Progress  and  Poverty,  where  we  note  he  itali- 
cises his  objectives,  he  says : 

"Let  the  individuals  who  now  hold  it  (val- 
uable  land)    still  retain,  if  they  want  to,   pos- 

14 


session  of  what  they  are  pleased  to  call  their 
land.  Let  them  continue  to  call  it  their  land. 
Let  them  buy  and  sell,  bequeath  and  devise  it.  ^ 
We  may  safely  leave  them  the  shell,  if  we  take 
the  kernel.  It  is  not  necessary  to  confiscate 
land;  it  is  only  necessary  to  confiscate  rent." 

He  then  says: 

"By  leaving  the  landowners  a  percentage 
of  rent,  which  would  probably  be  much  less 
than  the  cost  and  loss  involved  in  attempting 
to  rent  lands  through  State  agency,  and  by 
making  use  of  this  existing  machinery,  we  may 
without  jar  or  shock  assert  the  common  right 
to  land  by  taking  rent  for  public  uses.  We 
already  take  some  rent  in  taxation.  We  have 
only  to  make  some  changes  in  our  modes  of 
taxation  to  take  it  all. 

"What  I  therefor,  propose,  as  a  simple  yet 
sovereign  remedy,  which  will  raise  wages,  in-    " 
crease  the  earning  of  capital,  extirpate  pauper^ — ^ 
ism,    abolish    poverty,    give    remunerative    em-__ 
ployment    to    whoever    wishes    it,    afford    free-— 
scope  to  human  powers,   lessen   crime,  elevate— 
morals,  and  taste,  and  intelligence,  purify  gov- 
ernment  and    carry   civilization    to   yet    nobler  _ 
heights,  is — to  appropriate  rent  by  taxation."^ 

As  to  what  was  the  volume  of  this  rent,  oru 
when  taken  how  it  was  to  be  apportioned  between 
State  and  citizen,   Mr.  George  never  considered.  ) 
The  prime  idea  always  in  his  mind  was  to  get  they 
entire  of  rent,  save  a  nominal — say  five  per  cent — 
to  the  landowner  for  collection,  into  the  hands  of 
the  State,  and  this  because  private  ownership  of 
land  was  wrong,  and  distribution  of  the  "unearned 
increment"  would  restore  to  society  "social  wealth," 

15 


and  this  would  equalize  things  and  provide  the 
remedy.  In  his  Social  Problems,  p.  283,  Mr. 
George  says: 

L"A11  it  is  necessary  to  do  is  to  abolish  all 
other  forms  of  taxation  until  the  weight  of 
Taxation  rests  upon  the  value  of  land  irrespec- 
tive of  improvements,  and  takes  the  ground 
rent  for  public  benefit.  In  this  simple  way, 
without  increasing  governmental  machinery, 
but,  on  the  contrary,  greatly  simplifying  it,  we 
could  make  land  common  property.  And  in 
doing  this  we  could  abolish  all  other  taxation 
and  still  have  a  great  and  steadily  increasing 
surplus — a  growing  common  fund,  in  the  benefit 
of  which  all  might  share,  and  in  the  manage- 
ment of  which  there  would  be  such  a  direct  and 
general  interes  as  to  afford  the  strongest  guar- 
antees against  misappropriation  and  waste." 

And  on  page  295  he  continues  this  idea  and 
says: 

"Here  is  a  provision  made  by  natural  laws 
for  the  increasing  needs  of  social  growth;  here 
is  an  adaptation  of  nature  by  virtue  of  which 
the  natural  progress  of  society  is  a  progress 
toward  equality,  not  toward  inequality;  a  cen- 
tripetal force  tending  to  unity,  growing  out  of 
and  ever  balancing  a  centrifugal  force  tending 
to  diversity.  Here  is  a  fund  belonging  to  soci- 
ety as  a  whole  from  which,  without  the  degrad- 
ation of  alms,  private  or  public  provision  can 
be  made  for  the  weak,  the  helpless,  the  aged; 
from  which  provision  can  be  made  for  the  com- 
mon wants  of  all  as  a  matter  of  common  rights 
to  each,  and  by  the  utilization  of  which  society, 
as  it  advances,  may  pass,  by  natural  methods 
and  easy  stages  from  a  rude  association  for 
purposes  of  defense  and  police,  into  a  coopera- 

16 


tive  association,  in  which  combined  power 
guided  by  combined  intelligence  can  give  to 
each  more  than  his  own  exertions  multiplied 
many  fold  could  produce." 

Here  we  have  a  distinct  statement  that  the 
culmination  of  Mr.  George's  vision  is  socialism.. 
The  State  is  taking  possession  of  a  fund,  land 
value,  which  is  to  be  administered  by  the  State  as 
a  co-operative  association  or  establishment  for  the 
benefit  of  all;  and  this  conduct  of  the  State  is 
based  upon  the  principle  inherent  in  the  George 
doctrine,  as  the  Platform  declares  that  all  men  are 
equally  entitled  to  it  from  their  very  natures — the 
fact  that  they  are  men,  that  they  are  equal,  and  are 
hence  equally  entitled  to  the  earth. 

After  the  costs  of  the  State  are  paid  from  this 
fund  some  inkling  is  given  by  the  Platform  as  to 
how  a  part  of  the  balance  will  be  spent  by  the 
clause : 

"It  is  also  a  proper  function  of  society  to 
maintain  and  control  all  public  ways  for  the 
transportation  of  persons  and  property,  and  the 
transmission  of  intelligence;  and  so  to  maintain 
and  control  all  public  ways  in  cities  for  fur- 
nishing water,  gas,  and  other  things,  that  neces- 
sarily require  the  use  of  such  common  ways." 

By  maintain  and  control  Mr.  George  did  not 
mean  the  ownership  and  administration  by  the 
State  of  the  public  highways,  the  word  highway 
covering  all  channels  of  transportation  for  public 
use  or  consumption,  and  upon  equal  terms  to  all — 

17 


r 


as  the  Call  demands,  but  he  meant  that  public 
utilities  were  to  be  conducted  free  to  their  con- 
sumers, their  costs  being  defrayed  from  this  public 
fund  of  land  value.  Mr.  George,  in  his  lectures, 
commonly  iterated  that  a  street  car  line  should  be 
free  to  all  the  people  just  as  is  an  elevator  in  a 
building  is  free  to  all  the  tenants  and  their  callers, 
and  its  cost  is  a  charge  upon  the  rooms;  and  what 
was  said  of  the  street  railway  obtained  equally 
with  water,  gas,  telephone,  telegraphs  and  all  else. 
Since  the  operation  of  these  things  increased  the 
value  of  land,  it  was  proper  that  rent  of  land 
should  pay  for  them,  and  their  use  should  be  for 
the  taking. 

When  transportation,  gas,  water,  light,  old  age, 
and  other  pensions  and  awards  were  taken  care  of, 
if  there  was  still  left  money  in  the  fund  it  might 
be  distributed  in  whatever  way  its  directors,  the 
rulers  of  the  State,  might  determine.  A  fitting 
way,  I  have  heard  Single  Taxers  assert,  would  be 
to  increase  the  incomes  of  the  citizens  by  declaring 
^  dividend,  and  pay  the  sums  in  cash. 

We  therefore  find  the  essential  principle  of  the 
George  doctrine  to  be  this: 

The  use  of  the  State  by  the  citizen  to  take  from 
the  landowner  the  full  yield  of  valuable  land,  or 
rent  (less  a  nominal  primage)  to  be  distributed  to 
himself  J  first  in  sustaining  the  agent  through  whom 
the  taking  is  effected — the  State — the  balance  dis- 

18 


bursed  to  him  in  such  forms  as  his  concepts  of  his 
interests  may  direct.  And  this  taking  based  upon 
the  principle  that  he  has  a  right  to  it,  a  natural 
right,  originating  in  the  very  fact  that  he  is  a  man, 
that  he  is  the  equal  of  all  men,  and  a  member  of 
society — that  the  product  is  an  issue  of  the  earth 
in  connection  with  society — and  with  which  equal- 
ity of  being  and  of  right  he  was  invested  by  the 
Creator, 

The  whole  doctrine,  I  say,  as  to  the  taking,  is 
essentially,  fundamentally  wrong.  Man  has  no 
such  rights  as  Mr.  George  imagined,  and  he  has 
no  right  to  move  the  State  in  the  direction  of  such 
behest. 

The  Single  Tax  was  not  intended  by  Mr^^ 
George  as  a  fiscal  measure.  It  was  to  his  mind 
not  a  mere  devise  for  getting  in  taxes  in  an  easier 
and  better  way,  resulting  in  making  the  State  a 
less  onerous  burden  to  industry.  What  Mr. 
George  saw  in  it  was,  as  I  have  remarked,  a  pro- 
found sociological  provision;  the  remedy  for  the 
deep  evil  which  now  afflicts  society,  which  in  his 
eyes  was  pauperism  and  poverty  and  excessive 
wealth.  In  Social  Problems,  p.  290,  Mr.  George 
says: 

"It  is  no  mere  fiscal  reform  that  I  propose; 
it  is  a  conforming  of  the  most  important  social 
adjustments  to  natural  laws.  To  those  who 
have  given  thought  to  the  matter,  it  may  seem 
irreverently  presumptuous  to  say  that  it  is  the 

19 


evident  intent  of  the  Creator  that  land  values 
should  be  subject  of  taxation;  that  rent  should 
be  utilized  for  the  benefit  of  the  entire  com- 
munity, yet  to  whoever  does  think  of  it,  to  say 
this  will  appear  no  more  presumptuous  than  to 
say  that  the  Creator  has  intended  men  to  walk 
on  their  feet,  and  not  on  their  hands." 

And  yet  it  has  only  been  solely  as  a  fiscal  re- 
form that  what  bears  the  modified  name  of  the 
Single  Tax,  namely,  the  "Single  Tax  limited"  (a 
local  release  from  taxation  of  buildings  and  per- 
sonal property),  has  in  the  forty  years  since 
Progress  and  Poverty  was  published,  ever  gotten 
entry  into  any  community.  And  among  those 
countries  where,  even  in  this  phase  of  supposed 
"entering  wedge"  it  has  secured  a  footing,  the 
United  States  has  not  been  one.  In  the  British 
Colonies,  in  the  German  colony  of  Kiachau,  even 
in  the  German  nation  itself,  it  has  secured  an  ex- 
ceedingly attenuated  application,  having  none  of 
the  sociological  effects  that  Mr.  George's  vision 
contained.  In  the  State  of  California  it  has  three 
times  been  attempted  at  the  polls,  each  time  with- 
out success,  but  with  a  successively  increasing 
proportion  of  the  vote.  In  the  city  of  San  Fran- 
cisco, where  Progress  and  Poverty  was  written,  it 
has  been  solidly  fought  by  the  allied  business  inter- 
ests. At  the  last  election  at  which  a  Single  Tax 
amendment  to  the  constitution  was  submitted,  the 
savings  banks  published  to  their  patrons  and  the 
public  the  following  appeal: 

20 


SAVINGS  BANK  DEPOSITORS  AND  THE 
SINGLE  TAX 

Public  Statement  of  the  Associated  Savings 
Banks  of  San  Francisco  to  their  350,000 
Depositors,  on  why  they  Should  Vote 
Against  the  Single  Tax  Amendment,  Num- 
ber 5  on  the  Ballot. 
To  the  250,000  Depositors  in  the  Savings  Banks 
of  San  Francisco: 

So  vital  to  your  interests  is  the  defeat  of 
the  Single  Tax  Amendment  (Number  5  on  the 
ballot  in  November  election)  that  the  savings 
banks  would  be  remiss  in  their  duty  if  they  did 
not  take  steps  to  inform  you  of  the  nature  and 
effect  of  this  measure,  and  why  it  should  be 
beaten  by  a  large  vote.  This  statement  is  pub- 
lished by  the  Associated  Savings  Banks  of  San 
Francisco  as  the  best  means  of  bringing  the 
matter  before  their  350,000  depositors. 

THE  MEANING  OF  SINGLE  TAX 

The  advocates  of  Single  Tax  have  a  creed, 
originated  by  Henry  George  and  expressed  in 
the  following  passage  from  his  book  (Progress 
and  Poverty)  : 

"Private  property  in  land  is  a  bold, 
bare,  enormous  wrong,  like  that  of 
chattel  slavery." 

By  a  process  of  reasoning  satisfactory  to 
themselves,  the  advocates  of  Single  Tax  have 
reached  the  conclusion  that  it  is  as  immoral  to 
own  land,  an  inert  thing,  as  it  is  to  own  human 
beings!  They  say  the  value  of  land  should 
therefore  be  taken  for  the  public  use.  How? 
By  compensating  the  present  owners  as  the 
owners  of  a  water  works  or  street  railway  are 
compensated  when  the  public  takes  their  prop- 
erty? No;  they  propose  through  this  amend- 
ment to  levy  a  tax  equal  to  the  whole  earning 
21 


power  of  the  land  and  so  confiscate  its  value, 
thereby  depriving  its  owners  of  the  fruits  of 
their  industry  and  thrift. 

All  this  the  people  of  California  are  asked 
to   approve,   because   a   group   of   experimental 
idealists,  laboring  for  a  "cause,"  believe  private 
j)roperty  in  land  is  immoral. 

ITS  EFFECT  UPON  SAVINGS  BANK 
DEPOSITORS 

There  are  more  than  one  million  savings 
bank  depositors  in  California. 

Nearly  four  hundred  million  dollars  of  their 
money  is  loaned  on  the  security  of  real  estate. 
The  interest  of  savings  bank  depositors  in  this 
security  give  them,  collectively,  a  larger  inter- 
est in  California  real  estate  than  any  other 
class,  excepting  only  farmers  and  home-owners. 

Single  Tax  aims  to  abolish  the  value  of 
land  by  taking  its  entire  income  for  public  use, 
and  so  depreciate  the  security  on  which  the 
money  of  depositors  is  loaned. 

This  you  are  asked  to  approve,  because 
"private  property  in  land  is  immoral!" 

ITS  EFFECT  UPON  SAVINGS   BANK 
BORROWERS 

Tens  of  thousands  of  savings  bank  bor- 
rowers have  used  the  money  as  obtained  to  buy 
or  build  their  own  homes  in  the  city,  or  to  ac- 
quire small  farms  in  the  country,  which  they 
have  mortgaged  to  secure  their  debt. 

Until  the  mortgage  is  paid  off,  their  entire 
investment  of  money  and  labor  is  represented 
by  their  equity  in  the  property,  that  is,  by  the 
difference  between  its  selling  value  and  the 
amount  of  the  mortgage. 

Single  Tax  would  wipe  out  these  equities 
by  taking  in  the  form  of  a  tax  the  entire  "rental 
and  site  value"  of  the  land.     The  savings  of 

22 


years  would  disappear,  and  in  many  cases  the 
helpless  borrower  would  not  only  lose  his 
whole  investment,  but  he  would  be  personally 
liable  on  a  deficiency  judgment  for  an  addi- 
tional sum. 

Thus,  home-owners  striving  to  pay  off  their 
mortgages  are  asked  to  sacrifice  everything 
they  have  already  paid;  and  for  the  reason  that 
the  creed  of  Single  Tax  declares  a  man  has  no 
more  right  to  own  land  than  to  own  slaves! 

THE  ORIGIN  OF  THE  AMENDMENT 

The  pending  amendment  is  admittedly  an 
experiment  for  the  Single  Tax  scheme  has 
never  been  tried  out  in  practice  in  any  State 
in  the  Union.  Although  it  has  been  the  subject 
of  continual  agitation  for  some  thirty  years, 
the  voters,  for  reasons  which  must  be  apparent, 
have  never  failed  to  repudiate  it  at  the  polls. 

A  substantially  similar  measure  has  al- 
ready been  twice  defeated  in  California — in 
1912  by  a  majority  of  75,000  votes  and  in  1914 
by  a  majority  of  108,000  votes.. 

It  now  appears  on  the  ballot  throtigh  the 
initiative,  but  this  does  not  signify  a  spontane- 
ous demand  on  the  part  of  the  voters  of  this 
State.  On  the  contrary,  it  represents  a  plain 
abuse  of  the  initiative.  Most  of  the  money  to 
pay  the  cost  of  obtaining  signatures  to  the  peti- 
tion came  from  persons  outside  the  State  who 
have  taken  advantage  of  the  initiative  law  to 
force  an  election  upon  the  people  of  California. 

The  Single  Tax  advocates  call  their  Cali- 
fornia campaign  "The  Great  Adventure."  So  it 
must  be  for  non-residents  who,  fired  with  zeal 
and  a  "cause"  and  owning  no  property  here, 
lack  all  occasion  to  count  the  cost  of  their  ex- 
periment. But  the  scheme  does  not  appear  in 
the  light  of  a  "great  adventure"  to  the  hard 
common  sense  of  the  farmers,  home-owners  and 

23 


savings    bank    depositors    whose    interests    it 
threatens. 

Savings  Bank  Depositors,  it  is  of  vital  im- 
portance to  you  that  Single  Tax  should  not 
only  be  defeated,  but  that  the  majority  against 
it  should  be  so  great  as  to  discourage  forever 
the  attempt  to  place  the  burden  of  this  experi- 
ment upon  the  people  of  California. 

VOTE  "NO"  ON  SINGLE  TAX,  NUMBER  5 
ON  THE  BALLOT 

ASSOCIATED  SAVINGS  BANKS  OF  SAN  FRANCISCO: 
BANK  OF  ITALY, 

COLUMBUS  SAVINGS  AND  LOAN  SOCIETY, 
FRENCH  AMERICAN  BANK  OF  SAVINGS, 
FUGAZI  BANCA  POPOLARE  OPERAIA  ITALIANA, 
GERMAN  SAVINGS  &  LOAN  SOCIETY, 
HUMBOLDT  SAVINGS  BANK, 
ITALIAN-AMERICAN  BANK, 
MISSION  SAVINGS  BANK, 
MUTUAL  SAVINGS  BANK, 
SECURITY  SAVINGS  BANK. 

Dated  October  25,  1916. 

Clearly,  the  doctrine  that  "private  property  in 
land  is  a  bold,  bare,  enormous  wrong"  has  in  it 
the  power  to  elicit  vehement  condemnation  by  an 
exceedingly  large  and  important  element  of  our 
citizenry,  who  cannot  be  said  to  be  committed  in 
their  interests  wholly,  or  even  in  the  largest  sense, 
to  land  ownership,  but  whose  greatest  concern  is 
the  general  prosperity  of  the  community  which 
Mr.  George  believed  would  be  so  ascendently  en- 
larged by  the  political  application  of  his  principle. 

The  idea  that  the  earth  belongs  to  man  and 
that  its  value  should  be  absorbed  by  the  State  for 

24 


the  citizen,  was  not  original  with  Mr.  George. 
At  least,  when  the  concept  came  to  him  and  he 
turned  to  the  literature  upon  the  subject  he  found 
there  a  considerable  accumulation  of  recorded 
thought.  Chief  among  the  writers  upon  it  had 
been  Herbert  Spencer.  In  the  first  philosophical 
book  that  Spencer  wrote  he  stated  the  principle  in 
ten  postulates,  which  Mr.  George  later  set  forth 
and  declared  that  they  covered  the  whole  of  the 
doctrine.  Nor  was  the  idea  original  with  Spencer. 
It  went  back  of  him  into  the  Physiocratic  School; 
and  wherever  Dr.  Quesney  got  the  elements  of  it, 
we  do  not  know.  Truth  upon  a  great  world- 
moving  force  does  not  come  forward  with  a  gush, 
nor  can  any  one  man  ever  claim  the  credit  of  its 
perception.  Mr.  George  holds  a  large  place  in  its 
evolution,  so  does  Mr.  Spencer;  but  its  culmina- 
tion was  not  to  be  reached  either  in  the  day  of 
Spencer  or  of  George.  Spencer  forsook  the  idea, 
and  in  later  editions  of  his  book  he  expurgated  all 
reference  to  the  theory.  This  greatly  provoked 
Mr.  George,  who  devoted  an  entire  volume  to  what 
he  declared  to  be  Mr.  Spencer's  remissness,  and 
charged  his  conduct  to  moral  cowardice;  whereat 
Mr.  Spencer  came  back  with  a  tart  reply.  I  do 
not  believe  Mr.  Spencer  expunged  the  matter  from 
his  book  through  the  motives  which  Mr.  George 
ascribes  to  him.  The  fact  was  that  while  in  the 
earlier  years  of  his  philosophical  thought  the  doc- 

25 


trine  looked  sound  to  him,  yet  later  he  doubted  its 
correctness  ,and  became  so  far  convinced  of  its 
error  that  he  was  unwilling  to  longer  continue  it 
in  his  works.  And  yet  Mr.  Spencer  never  knew 
what  was  really  wrong  with  it,  never  reached  the 
analyses  which  showed  him  in  fullness  its  falsity. 
Mr.  George  was  deceived  by  the  doctrine  all  his 
life.  Mr.  Spencer,  a  far  greater  analyst  than  Mr. 
George,  was  not  deceived,  but  failed  to  locate  its 
error. 

For  the  error  in  the  doctrine  is  due  to  two 
things — failure  to  understand  the  State,  and  fail- 
ure to  understand  the  value  of  land.  These 
analyses  were  never  made  until  they  were  made 
in  The  World  Question  and  Its  Answer:  The  So- 
lution of  the  Problem  of  War,  the  unpublished 
book  of  my  authorship,  which  I  hope  may  soon 
be  printed.  It  is,  indeed,  singular  to  say  that 
Mr.  George,  during  the  last  twenty-five  years  of 
his  life  devoted  himself  exclusively  to  a  discussion 
of  land  value,  without  ever  knowing  what  land 
value  was.  He  never  pushed  the  analysis  into  the 
zone  of  determining  how  it  arose.  With  him  it 
always  was: 

"that  which  is  gained  by  general  growth  and 
improvement  of  the  community." 

In  Social  Problems,  p.  292,  he  thus  speaks  of  it : 

"What    can   be    more   in   accordance   with 
justice  than  that  the  value  of  land,  which  is  not 

2S 


created  by  individual  effort,  but  arises  from 
the  existence  and  growth  of  society,  should  be 
taken  by  society  for  social  needs?  *  *  •* 
The  value  of  land  only  arises  as  in  the  integra- 
tion of  society,  the  need  for  some  public  or 
common  revenue  begins  to  be  felt.  It  increases 
as  the  development  of  society  goes  on,  and  as 
larger  and  larger  revenues  are  required." 

Again  he  says  (p.  295)  : 

"As  individuals  come  together  in  communi- 
ties, and  society  grows  integrating  more  and 
more  its  individual  members,  and  making  gen- 
eral interests  and  general  conditions  of  more 
and  more  relative  importance,  there  arises,  ever 
and  above  the  value  which  individuals  can  cre- 
ate for  themselves,  a  value  which  is  created  by 
the  community  as  a  whole,  and  which  attaching 
to  land,  becomes  tangible,  definite  and  capable 
of  computation,  and  appropriation.  As  society 
grows,  so  grows  this  value  which  springs  from 
and  represents  in  tangible  form  what  society  as 
a  whole  contributes  to  production  as  distin- 
guished from  what  is  contributed  by  individual 
exertion.  By  virtue  of  natural  law  in  those 
aspects  which  it  is  the  purpose  of  the  science 
we  call  political  economy  to  discover,  as  it  is 
the  purpose  of  the  sciences  which  we  call  chem- 
istry and  astronomy  to  discover  other  aspects 
of  natural  law — all  social  advance  necessarily 
contributes  to  the  increase  of  this  common 
value;  to  the  growth  of  this  common  fund." 

Here,  then,  we  have  as  far  as  Mr.  George  ever 
got  into  an  analysis  of  the  origin  of  this  quality 
which  he  regarded  as  "unearned  increment"  and 
called  land  value.  It  was  to  him  a  phenomenon 
which  seemingly  through  certain  combinations  and 

27 


alchemies  inherent  in  society  effloresced  as  an  ef- 
fluvia. It  exuviated,  or  shed,  from  the  social  body. 
So  arising,  it  seemed  to  Mr.  George  that  all  men 
were  alike  entitled  to  it  in  equal  share,  since  they 
were  surely  all  alike  entitled  to  the  earth  which 
the  Creator  had  made.  Here  was  his  prime  mis- 
take. 

For  if  Mr.  George  had  only  asked  himself  what 
society  is,  he  would  have  realized  that  it  is  an 
^ggregsite  of  individuals,  of  units,  hence,  of  social 
units.  Then  all  of  value  that  arises  in  society 
must  issue  from  these  units.  And  while  these 
units  act  co-operatively  in  the  general  scheme  of 
moving  the  earth  to  yield  them  livings,  yet  the  con- 
duct of  each  is  as  an  individual;  so  that  all  value 
of  whatever  kind  must  have  its  rise  with  the  indi- 
vidual; and  as  this  value  is  unquestionably  of  two 
kinds,  viz.,  the  value  of  things  and  service,  and  the 
value  of  land,  we  have  here  the  quality  of  value 
split  in  two  and  falling  apart  into  two  definite 
compartments,  or  what  I  call  hemispheres,  namely, 
the  unit  value,  the  value  of  things  and  service,  and 
the  social  value,  or  value  of  land. 

Having  got  this  far  Mr.  George  would  have 
seen  that  the  value  of  land  is  not  a  product  of 
society  at  all,  but  is  a  product  of  the  unit  in 
society;  hence  he  would  have  perceived  that  to 
talk  of  giving  every  man  an  equal  share  of  it 
merely  because  he  was  a  man  and  in  society,  was 

28 


erroneous.  If  this  value  is  to  be  partitioned  at  all 
it  must  be  paid  out  to  those  who  make  it  and  in 
due  proportions;  for  as  the  powers  of  men  in  pro- 
duction differ,  so  their  productivity  of  social  value 
differ,  and  the  question  would  at  once  arise  as  to 
what  right  has  the  State  to  take  social  value  which 
I  have  produced,  and  which  according  to  Mr. 
George's  ethics  ought  to  belong  to  me,  and  give 
it  to  Smith  who  has  not  only  produced  none  of 
my  social  value,  but  has  produced  none  of  his 
own,  for,  we  shall  say.  Smith  has  never  raised 
his  finger  in  the  doing  of  any  co-operative  thing; 
all  his  life  he  has  only  consumed. 

Clearly  then  the  idea  that  social  value  or  land 
value  is  created  "by  the  community  as  a  whole" 
is  erroneous;  it  is  not  so  created  at  all.  It  is 
created  by  the  individual,  the  social  unit.  But 
how  is  it  created  by  him?  Mr.  George  certainly 
does  not  tell  us.* 

The  fact  is  that  it  arises  in  a  way  of  which 
the  social  units  are  unconscious.  It  is  engendered 
incidentally  to  the  making  of  the  thing,  or  render- 
ing the  service.  The  unit  creates  unit  value  with 
the  object  of  his  deed  in  mind.  His  article  made 
is  the  result  of  his  purposeful,  intentional,  con- 
scious act.     He  knows  when  he  makes  the  thing, 


*The  analyses  of  the  social  value  comprises  over  one  hun- 
dred pages  in  Volume  I  of  The  World  Question  and  Its  Answer. 
It  can,  of  course,  only  be  slightly  touched  upon  here. 

29 


where  he  makes  it,  and  where  it  is  when  it  is 
finished,  and  he  knows  how  much  of  value  he 
created  upon  having  made  it;  that  is,  he  knows 
what  it  has  cost  him  in  material,  overhead,  inter- 
est, labor  and  so  on.  He  may  also  make  this 
value  non  co-operatively;  that  is,  alone,  I  may 
retire  to  the  Sierras  and,  on  a  small  piece  of  land, 
I  may  there  make,  from  wood  about  my  cabin, 
say  household  furniture.  And  my  making  these 
products  will  not  in  any  way  confer  a  penny  of 
value  upon  any  of  the  land  about  me. 

When,  however,  I  send  these  merchantable 
articles  I  have  made  to  San  Francisco,  and  their 
presence  in  the  store  cause  people  to  come  thence 
in  numbers  and  they  are  purchased  and  enter  the 
uses  to  which  their  buyers  shall  devote  them,  then 
through  them  social  value  arises;  that  is,  the  land 
in  the  region  of  those  articles  becomes  more  valu- 
able, and  when  we  look  to  see  what  this  furniture 
has  done  that  has  generated  this  value,  we  remark 
that  it  has  enabled  the  units  of  society  to  become 
more  co-operative,  that  is,  it  has  increased  the 
efficiency  of  the  social  units  in  their  task  of  using 
the  earth  to  produce  livings  for  themselves  and 
for  each  other.  It  has  facilitated  the  production 
of  food,  clothing,  shelter,  transportation  and  so 
on.  So  then  we  see  what  social  value  in  its 
essence  is:  it  is  an  influence  facilitating  co-opera- 
tion.    That  is  to  say,  the  social  value  is  a  poten- 

30 


tiality  deposited  in  the  land  which  enables  the 
user  more  efficiently  to  serve  society  in  the  par- 
ticular way  of  its  use,  than  he  could  do  without  it. 

Although  the  furniture  did  not  begin  to  pro- 
duce social  value  until  it  reached  San  Francisco, 
and  called  into  co-operation  the  railroad,  teamster, 
warehouseman,  merchant,  buyers,  and  so  on,  yet 
the  social  value  which  it  ultimately  created  was 
really  related,  in  large  part,  to  my  act  in  the 
Sierras  of  making  furniture.  I  did  not  know  this. 
I  did  not  know  that  while  I  was  making  unit 
value,  I  was  at  the  same  time  making  that  which 
would,  as  soon  as  the  articles  passed  into  society, 
become  social  value.  Nor  did  the  railroad  people, 
or  the  teamster,  the  storekeeper  or  others  who  co- 
operated in  getting  that  unit  value  to  the  con- 
sumer, know  that  in  so  doing  they  were  severally 
making  social  value.  Social  valt^  is  therefore 
created  by  the  unconscious  act^of  ^he^  unit  while 
making  unit  value.  He  does  not  know  when  he 
makes  it,  how  much  of  it  he  makes,  or  where  it 
is  when  he  has  made  it.  It  is  therefore,  what  I 
call  the  subjective  value  as  against  the  unit  value 
which  is  the  objective  value,  the  negative  as 
against  the  positive.  It  is  nevertheless  value  as 
perfectly  as  is  the  commodity,  value. 

When,  therefore,  we  perceive  that  the  social 
value  can  only  be  made  co-operatively — for  while 
I  finished  the  table  in  my  cabin,  and  so  created 

31 


there  the  unit  value,  yet  it  would  never  have  had 
power  to  generate  any  social  value  unless  I  had 
converted  my  separate  act  of  making  it  into  a  co- 
operative act  by  hooking  it  up  with  the  acts  of 
others  in  San  Francisco — so  that  while  the  social 
value  can  only  be  made  co-operatively,  yet  there 
is  always  present  in  the  act  of  making  the  social 
value  another  ingredient,  that  is,  order.  Order 
must  necessarily  be  maintained  for  people  to  be 
able  to  co-operate.  Where  there  is  disorder,  where 
people  are  afraid  of  one  another,  refuse  to  trust  one 
another,  where  disturbance  is  rampant,  they  cannot 
co-operate,  and  social  value  cannot  be  made.  The 
lands  in  such  places  will  have  no  value.  People 
must  be  secure  in  the  possession  of  the  fruits  of 
their  labors  or  they  will  not  work  with  each  other, 
and  where  they  do  not  work  with  each  other  social 
value  cannot  arise. 

Now  the  power  in  society  which  is  in  charge 
of  order  is  the  State.  It  is  not  understood.  People 
think  the  State  is  an  institution  gotten  up  to  give 
some  privileges  as  against  others,  or  to  conduct 
utilitarian  industry  and  so  deprive  the  citizen  of 
that  which  is  solely  his  right — that  of  co-operating 
with  his  fellows  in  the  task  of  getting  a  living. 
We  do  not  today  know  that  the  State  is  that  organ 
of  society  whose  sole  function  it  is  to  maintain 
order,  and  as  such  it  is  the  sole  user  of  force, 
the  force  of  society  in  effecting  that  result. 

32 


So  then  the  social  value,  being  made  by  the 
unconscious  act  of  the  citizen  in  the  presence  of 
order  enforced  by  the  State,  belongs  really  to  the 
State,  through  whose  offices  it  has  been  made. 
If  it  does  not  belong  to  the  State  who  does  it 
belong  to?  To  the  citizen  who  made  it?  Cer- 
tainly it  does  not  belong  to  the  citizen  who  did 
not  make  it,  as  Mr.  George  would  give  it.  Very 
well,  then,  let  us  give  it  to  the  citizen  who  made 
it.  How  will  we  get  it  to  him?  Where  is  it? 
Who  knows?  Does  he  know?  Though  he  may 
have  made  a  billion  dollars  of  it,  can  he  identify 
one  nickel's  worth  of  it?  Mr.  Thomas  A.  Edison 
has  perhaps  made  a  billion  dollars  of  social  value 
during  his  lifetime  yet  he  does  not  know  that  he 
has  made  five  cents  of  it.  Verily  in  its  nature  this 
quality  was  never  intended  to  find  its  claimant  in 
individual  ownership.  The  social  value  cannot  be 
individualized. 

It  is  Nature's  pablum  of  the  State.  The  State 
is  a  natural  creation  without  which  society  could 
not  exist;  and  as  Nature  provides  food  for  all 
her  creatures  so  she  has,  cunningly,  most  wonder- 
fully, provided  for  the  State  a  source  of  susten- 
ance wholly  its  own,  so  automatically  devised  and 
engendered  that  its  production  does  not  bear  in 
the  slightest  way  upon  those  who  produce  it,  for 
the  State  to  take  which,  as  I  shall  show,  facilitates 
production  of  both  unit  and  social  value  and  does 
not  lessen  either.  33 


But  as  the  State's  sole  function  is  to  maintain 
order,  and  cannot  engage  in  utilitarian  industry, 
so  it  cannot  administer  the  land.  That  is,  it  can- 
not sell  land,  rent,  collect  rents,  attended  to  prop- 
erty, and  so  on.  This  is  utilitarian  business. 
Neither  can  it  take  from  the  social  value  more 
than  its  needs,  for  if  the  State  took  more  than  its 
needs,  it  would  have  to  give  the  residue  away. 
This  would  not  be  the  State  taking,  but  it  would 
be  the  recipient  using  the  State  to  take  for  him. 
Now  in  order  to  take  anything  from  anyone  you 
must  first  show  a  superior  title  to  the  thing  taken 
than  that  of  the  possessor.  The  State  has  that 
title  to  the  social  value  in  so  far  as  its  needs,  and 
may  rightfully  take  it  from  the  landowner.  But 
no  one  else  has.  Certainly  all  and  sundry,  merely 
because  they  are  men  and  are  in  society  have  no 
such  title.  There  is  hence,  no  way  to  get  out  of 
the  possession  of  the  landowner  more  of  the  social 
value  than  the  State's  costs,  and  this  dispenses 
with  Mr.  George's  idea  of  distributing  the  value 
of  land. 

But  we  have  seen  that  it  is  the  State's  duty 
to  maintain  order.  In  the  furtherance  of  order 
the  State  may  do  anything  properly  necessary  to 
maintain  order.  My  house  is  my  castle;  yet  if 
I  so  use  it  that  it  is  a  nuisance,  that  it  is  a  source 
of  disorder,  disturbance,  confusion  to  my  neigh- 
bors and  others,  the  State  may  lay  upon  me  such 

34 


inhibitions  as  will  compel  me  to  eliminate  the  dis- 
order. So  the  State  stands  charged  by  society 
with  the  duty  of  securing  orderly  use  of  the  earth. 
What  is  orderly  use  of  the  earth?  Is  it  board- 
fencing  a  lot,  and  strewing  it  with  tins  and  debris  ? 
Is  it  growing  six  rows  of  potatoes  upon  a  million- 
dollar  "piece  or  parcel"  of  land?  Or  is  it  cover- 
ing with  a  one-story  building  a  lot  next  door  to 
a  twenty-story  building  in  the  center  of  a  crowded 
city.  Is  it  growing  oat  hay  in  the  midst  of  groves 
of  oranges  where  bare  land  sells  for  a  thousand 
dollars  an  acre?  And  so  on.  Is  it  not  manifest 
that  "orderly  use  of  the  earth"  means  that  the 
land  in  its  several  parcels  shall  be  put  to  such  use 
as  by  reason  of  its  value  would  be  full  and  effi- 
cient use  of  the  land?  And  when  we  realize  that 
in  society  today  the  valuable  land  is  only  40  per 
cent  used,  while  60  per  cent  of  it  we  do  not  use, 
an  enormous  fund  of  value  in  society  from  which 
society  receives  no  benefit  whatever — when  this  is 
known,  we  shall  not  longer  look  for  the  cause  that 
lies  at  the  bottom  of  all  the  inharmony  in  human 
society,  as  my  book  the  World  Question  and  Its 
Answer  fully  shows. 

For  if  we  have  in  society  a  value  which  is  not 
used,  it  does  not  matter  whether  such  value  be 
in  all  the  manufactured  iron,  or  the  manufactured 
wood,  or  the  cereals,  or  fabrics  or  else,  if  these 
be  shut  away  from  society  and  cannot  be  used, 

35 


society  is  going  to  suffer  for  such  use;  the  units 
of  society  will  have  thus  much  less  of  value  to 
exert  their  efforts  upon,  for  value  is  the  basis  of 
co-operation.  It  must  hence  occur  that  if  we  have 
60  per  cent  of  the  social  value  idle,  we  shall  have 
60  per  cent  of  the  people  idle.  These  will  not  all 
be  absolutely  idle;  some  will  be  so,  but  the  vast 
multitude  will  be  in  business  hard  times;  that  is 
they  will  be  partially  non  co-operative — from  one 
per  cent  to  100  per  cent. 

Orderly  use  of  the  earth  is  effected  by  the  State 
in  levying  upon  the  several  parcels  of  land  such 
an  annual  Call  as  will  make  it  unprofitable  for 
the  owner  of  the  land  to  hold  it  at  less  than  its 
full  use,  that  is,  its  appropriate  use.  This  charge 
would  necessarily  be  uniform  in  neighborhoods, 
and  would  be  effected  by  fixing  valuations  upon 
land  through  appraisements  precisely  as  now  pur- 
sued by  assessors.  The  appraisements  would 
simply  more  nearly  accord  with  the  social  value 
content  of  the  land  and  the  rates  would  be  higher. 

This  change  would  not  lessen  the  property  of 
the  landowner  in  the  land.  To  the  contrary  it 
would  greatly  increase  it.  There  would  be  a  de- 
cline during  the  first  year,  possibly  30  per  cent, 
but  it  would  quickly  recover  and  following  that 
there  would  come  a  tremendous  rise  in  the  volume 
of  social  value  which  would  far  more  than  com- 
pensate the  landowner  for  all  that  the  State  has 

36 


taken.  This  rise  would  be  occasioned  by  release 
from  taxation  of  the  unit  value,  the  striking  away 
of  all  forms  of  privilege  and  monopoly  which  now 
hamper  men  in  their  co-operation,  and  by  the 
enormous  production  which  would  ensue  through 
full  and  efficient  use  of  all  the  valuable  land  in 
society.  In  other  word,  full  co-operation  of  all 
the  members  of  society  ensues;  these  people  in  ad- 
dition to  using  the  earth  use  the  unit  value;  the 
latter  thereby  becomes  the  shuttles  through  whose 
unhampered  and  unimpeded  action  social  value 
is  woven.  Once  this  truth  is  understood  the  land- 
owners themselves  will  be  the  most  severe  guard- 
ians of  the  unit  value,  strenuously  opposing  every 
project  to  tax  it,  to  impair  it,  to  repress  its  use 
in  the  slightest  way.  They  will  not  be,  as  they 
are  now,  declaiming  against  removing  taxes  from 
buildings,  personal  property  and  else,  in  the  Single 
Tax  campaign,  when  they  know  for  a  fact  that 
they  themselves  enormously  benefit  by  such  re- 
lease, and  the  State  is  limited  in  its  taking  only 
to  that  sum  required  to  force  continuous  full  use 
of  the  valuable  land. 

The  landowner  is  the  steward  of  the  State; 
as  such  he  performs  a  natural  function  and  nature 
rewards  him  profusely  for  his  services,  as  she 
does  all  those  who  obey  her  laws. 

Nor  would  landowners  consent  to  the  main- 
tenance of  armaments  to  be  used  in  war,  where  a 

37 


sociological  arrangement  exists  that  nations  have 
ample  room  for  full  and  free  development,  and 
cannot  possibly  benefit  a  particle  by  the  results 
of  war,  when  those  landowners  realize  that  the 
entire  cost  of  such  armaments  is  a  charge  upon 
them  and  must  be  paid  from  the  social  value. 
They  will  strenuously  resist  the  laying  of  any 
burden  upon  the  social  value  above  that  required 
to  keep  the  land  at  its  full  economic  use,  and  they 
will  be  changed  from  the  most  active  agents  for 
war,  as  they  now  are  in  Europe,  to  the  most  vigi" 
lant  protectors  of  peace. 

Understanding  then,  how  the  social  value,  or 
land  value  is  made,  if  it  were  to  be  taken  from 
the  landowner  and  distributed,  as  Mr.  George 
would  have  it,  manifestly  it  must  be  distributed 
not  only  to  those  who  contribute  it  but  in  the 
proportions  in  which  it  was  contributed.  The 
condition  would  be  similar  to  that  of  a  joint  stock 
company  whose  members  receive  according  to  the 
contributions  they  severally  make  to  the  common 
fund.  Mr.  Edison,  as  I  remarked,  has  contrib- 
uted many  millions.  My  gardener  has  contributed 
very  little.  But  Mr.  George  would  give  my  gar- 
dener as  much  as  Mr.  Edison  because  they  are 
both  men.  "What  has  that  got  to  do  with  it?" 
you  ask.  Assuredly.  And  when  we  use  a  part 
of  this  land  value  to  conduct  telephones  and  my 
cook,  who  has  not  produced  as  much  social  value 

38 


as  the  gardener,  spends  a  considerable  part  of  her 
time  at  the  telephone,  we  find  as  against  Mr.  Edi- 
son that  there  is  a  unit  getting  a  disproportionate 
share  of  social  value,  for  Mr.  Edison  does  not  use 
telephones  at  all. 

To  give  people  free  utilities  and  free  coin  would 
not  have  the  effect  upon  them  which  Mr.  George 
thought.  It  would  not  be  a  fund  "in  the  manage- 
ment of  which  there  would  be  such  a  direct  and 
general  interest  as  to  afford  the  strongest  guar- 
antees against  misappropriation  and  waste,'*  as 
Mr.  George  supposed.  It  would,  to  the  contrary, 
lessen  their  initiative.  People  should  be  compelled 
to  put  forth  effort  for  what  they  receive.  The 
social  value  would  be  a  corruption  fund  to  do 
politics  over.  People  would  be  in  incessant  quar- 
rels over  their  "rights"  to  proportions,  and  the 
idea  that  car  service  were  given  free  to  benefit 
the  people  in  the  outlying  districts  while  those 
closer  in  did  not  use  cars,  yet  their  money  in  the 
fund  went  to  pay  for  cars  and  so  on,  would  be 
productive  of  continuous  disturbance,  until  through 
the  weakening  influence  upon  the  people  of  these 
fund  distributions  there  would  tend  to  be  no  such 
fund  because  of  a  consequent  lessening  of  the 
volume  of  the  social  value.  There  would  he  gen- 
eral demoralization  of  the  people. 

Here  then,  is  the  difference  between  the  Call 
System  and  the  Single  Tax.    The  latter  denounces 

39 


— private  property  in  land,  and  takes  from  it  its  full 
value  which  it  absorbs  through  confiscating  rent, 
the  grounds  of  such  taking  being  that  it  is  of  right 
the  property  of  society  and  should  be  distributed 
to  its  members.  The  Call  System  shows  it  to  be 
the  property,  not  of  society,  but  of  the  State;  that 
it  cannot  be  distributed  to  society,  and  only  enough 
of  it  can  be  taken  by  the  State  to  enable  the  State 
in  its  function  of  maintaining  order  to  compel 
orderly  use  of  the  earth.  The  Single  Tax  denudes 
the  land  in  the  hands  of  its  owner  of  all  value; 
the  Call  restores  to  it  far  more  value  than  it  takes, 
making  it  highly  profitable  to  own  land,  yet  finding 
abundance  of  land  in  society  for  all  the  people. 
Practically  everyone  under  the  Call  System,  would 
become  a  landowner.  Only,  under  the  Call,  the 
landowner  could  not  hold  his  land  at  less  than  its 
full  use,  according  to  its  value. 

In  the  Single  Tax  Platform  there  occurs 
amongst  the  number  of  efiFects  which  the  Single 
Tax,  it  claims,  would  attain  the  statement: 

_  "It  would  thus  make  it  impossible  for  spec- 

^ulators  and  monopolists  to  hold  natural  oppor- 
tunities unused  or  only  half  used,  and  would 
throw  open  to  labor  the  illimitable  field  which 
the  earth  offers  to  man." 

It  may  be  conceded  that  the  Single  Tax  would 
squeeze  out  the  land  speculator,  but  that  it  would 
''throw  open  to  labor  the  illimitable  field,"  etc.,  is 

40 


extremely  doubtful.  That  it  would  cause  any  con- 
siderable increased  use  of  land,  or  relieve  the 
pressure  of  rent  against  wages,  it  is  impossible  to 
see.  The  Academic  economists  strenuously  insist 
it  would  not,  and  I  am  not  prepared  to  say  that  in 
this  instance  they  are  not  correct.  While  the 
Single  Tax  would  aim,  as  the  Call  in  fact  does, 
to  wipe  out  all  taxes  upon  which  I  show  is  the 
unit  value,  taxes  on  personal  property,  buildings, 
income  taxes,  tariffs,  taxes  on  estates,  internal  rev- 
enue and  the  "whole  slough"  of  taxes,  dues, 
charges,  imposts,  and  else  which  now  stifle  busi- 
ness, and  industry  so  relieved  would  become  far 
more  active  than  at  present,  yet  for  the  rest  the 
Single  Tax  simply  shifts  landlords.  Instead  of 
Jones  owning  the  land  the  State  owns  it.  If  we 
shall  say  that  Jones  is  now  holding  the  land  un- 
used or  half  used  as  a  speculation,  rather  than 
pay  the  State  its  full  rental  value,  he  may  prefer 
to  drop  it.  The  State  would  then  sell  it  for  taxes 
to  the  highest  bidder.  The  buyer  would  buy  it 
for  use,  not  for  speculation.  In  this  way,  if  the 
land  sold  readily,  the  Single  Tax  would  get  full 
use  of  the  land,  and  this  was  what  Mr.  George 
meant  in  his  statement  in  his  Platform  which  we 
have  quoted.  But  would  lands  sell  readily  under 
such  circumstances?  Is  a  state  of  fixed  tenantry 
such  as  induces  people  to  go  upon  land  in  the  in- 
stallation of  industry?     Is  it  not  a  fact  that  the 

41 


emolument  derived  to  the  owner  fully  using  land 
from  the  margin  of  rent  which  remains  in  his 
hands  after  the  State  is  paid  what  we  now  call 
taxes,  is  a  very  large  inducement  to  use  land? 
Where  is  the  farmer  who  does  not  want  to  own 
his  farm?  And  what  would  be  the  advantage  of 
owning  a  farm  if  one  was  in  fact  merely  a  lessor 
of  the  State  paying  to  the  State  its  full  rental 
value?  It  is  true  that  people  will  use  land,  even 
under  tenantry,  for  industry  must  go  on,  and  the 
earth  is  the  only  place  upon  which  it  can  go  on. 
Yet  beyond  all  question  the  inducement  to  use 
land,  that  is,  to  conduct  industry,  would  be  far 
greater,  the  stimulus  to  initiative  would  be  vastly 
more,  if  the  owner-user  were  permitted  to  retain 
a  large  part  of  the  rent,  and  the  State  limited 
in  its  taking  to  only  the  quantity  necessary  at  all 
times  to  secure  full  use  of  the  land  according  to 
the  merit  of  its  value. 

In  other  words,  Mr.  George  with  his  reform 
was  looking  in  the  wrong  direction.  It  is  not 
through  dividing  up  the  yield  of  the  social  value 
— rent,  that  benefit  to  society  is  to  be  obtained,  but 
it  is  through  full  use  of  the  land.  Not  through 
giving  people  free  electric  light,  pensions  and  coin, 
but  through  the  vast  quantity  of  products  poured 
into  society  through  valuable  land  fully  used, 
which  lowers  prices  with  abundance,  and  raises 
wages  through  demand  for  labor  caused  by  the 

42 


heavy  draughts  upon  labor  by  the  land  forced  to 
full  use.  The  Single  Tax  cannot  secure  in  that 
manner  what  its  Platform  says;  it  cannot  in  this 
way  "throw  open  to  labor  the  illimitable  field  which 
the  earth  offers  to  man,"  simply  because  man  will 
not  go  into  the  field  freely  and  fully  without  he 
has  more  inducement  to  his  enterprise  than  that 
given  by  his  labor  alone;  he  must  have  thereto  a 
share,  and  a  very  large  share,  of  that  value  which 
his  labor  unconsciously  produces,  and  which  I  call 
the  social  value. 

Nor  can  I  see  that  the  Single  Tax  would  re- 
move the  pressure  of  rent  against  wages,  of  which^^^ 
Mr.  George  justly  complains.  This  pressure  is 
caused  by  three  things:  (1)  the  holding  of  valu- 
able land  out  of  use,  (2)  the  edging  up  of  price 
of  rent  and  land  to  absorb  the  slack  of  income 
of  industry,  caused  by  the  effort  of  industry  to 
employ  itself,  and  (3)  by  the  presence  of  idle 
labor  at  the  door  of  industry  seeking  jobs  and  un- 
dercutting in  wages  those  at  work,  this  idle  labor 
caused  by  idle  or  inefficiently  used  valuable  land. 
As  I  remark,  the  Single  Tax  would  indifferently 
encourage  the  use  of  land.  Matters  not  who  the 
landlord  is,  the  tenant  will  improve  land  only  in 
the  flimsiest  way;  his  concern  is  to  get  all  off  it, 
and  put  back  as  little  on  it,  as  possible;  and  he 
wants  to  get  this  off  with  the  ultimate  object  of 
quitting  the  land  and  going  into  something  that 

43 


is  more  profitable.  The  quality  of  the  Single  Tax 
would  not  therefore  be  to  draw  to  all  of  the  idle 
valuable  land,  users;  nor,  because  of  its  failure  to 
induce  the  making  of  the  best  improvements  upon 
the  land,  would  it  move  the  use  of  the  land  to  its 
highest  efficiency. 

Nor  can  it  be  seen  that  the  State  being  the 
sole  landlord,  would  not  edge  up  on  industry  to 
absorb  the  full  of  the  yield  of  industry  as  far  as 
possible,  just  as  the  landlord  does  now.  Since  it 
will  take  all  of  rent,  surely  as  rent  in  land  increases 
through  increase  of  the  value  of  land,  the  State 
would  come  forward  and  take  it.  Here  we  have 
the  pressure  of  rent  against  wages  precisely  as 
we  now  have  it  with  the  landlord.  If  it  was  the 
quality  of  the  Sing^le  Tax  to  cause  full  use  of  all 
the  valuable  land,  if  as  soon  as  new  land  accreted 
any  value  it  would  have  to  be  placed  to  its  fitting 
use,  as  the  Call  system  requires,  this  pressure 
would  not  exist,  but  it  is  impossible  to  see  that 
that  Single  Tax  would  do  this;  to  the  contrary, 
as  far  as  I  am  able  to  penetrate  the  analysis,  it 
would  not  do  so.  What  miner  would  devote  his 
life  to  seeking  out  new  ore  deposits  if  his  reward 
in  finding  one  would  be  merely  wages  for  his  labor 
in  mining  the  ore?  Who  would  level  a  forest  of 
timber  trees  if  he  must  needs  pay  to  the  State  a 
stumpage  at  the  same  rate  he  would  pay  to  a  land- 
lord?    Some,  indeed,  would  do  this.     Today  both 

44 


mines  and  forests  are  leased.  Under  the  Single 
Tax  the  tendency  perhaps  would  be,  through  low- 
ering price  by  forced  sales,  to  increase  the  number 
of  those  who  are  disposed  to  be  tenants;  but  the 
inducement  to  go  on  the  land  and  work  it  to  its 
full  efficiency  is  not  sufficient  under  the  Single 
Tax,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  under  it  a  great 
deal  of  valuable  land  would  not  he  used,  and  land 
generally  would  not  be  used  to  its  highest  effici- 
ency. 

Not,  therefore,  using  all  the  land,  or  using 
that  employed  to  its  highest  efficiency,  there  would 
be  a  margin  of  people  in  society  unemployed  or 
half  employed — for  as  I  show  in  The  World  Ques- 
tion efficient  use  of  all  the  valuable  land  and  effi- 
cient employment  of  all  the  people  correlate  each 
other.  You  cannot  have  any  idle  or  half  idle  peo- 
ple if  all  the  valuable  land  be  efficiently  used. 
These  unemployed  and  half  employed  people  in- 
stitute and  maintain  a  pressure  against  the  doors 
of  industry  through  under-cutting  wages,  holding 
them  low,  and  the  margin  of  income  in  industry 
which  would  otherwise  go  to  wages,  goes  to  rent 
and  is  collected  by  the  landlord,  and  under  the 
Single  Tax,  would  be  collected  by  the  State. 

What  Mr.  George  was  really  striving  to  reach 
was  the  key  to  that  condition  which  he  asserts  in 
his  Platform  as: 


45 


^  "It  would  thus  solve  the  labor  problem,  do 

away  with  involuntary  poverty,  raise  wages  in 
all  occupations  to  the  full  earnings  of  labor, 
make  overproduction  impossible  until  all  hu- 
man wants  are  satisfied,  render  labor  saving 
inventions  a  blessing  to  all,  and  cause  such  an 
enormous  production  and  such  an  equitable 
distribution  of  wealth  as  would  give  to  all 
comfort,  leisure,  and  participation  in  the  ad- 
vantages of  an  advancing  civilization." 
And  the  way  he  would  secure  this  was  by 
"throwing  open  to  labor  the  illimitable  field  of 
employment  which  the  earth  offers  to  man." 

This  vision  is  correct  enough,  but  the  Single 
Tax  will  not  do  it,  only  the  Call  can  do  it.  The 
whole  structure  of  the  Single  Tax  rests  upon  false 
premises,  upon  erroneous  analyses.  Mr.  George 
never  grasped  the  great  central  principle  in  the 
whole  thing,  namely,  order  in  the  use  of  the  earth, 
nor  recognized  that  this  State  which  he  wanted 
to  become  the  agent  of  the  citizen  to  collect  for 
him  from  the  landowner  the  rent  of  land,  was 
really  the  organ  of  society  in  possession  and  con- 
trol of  order,  and  whose  function  it  is  to  enforce 
orderly  use  of  the  earth,  now  used  by  society  with 
such  tragic  disorder  that  we  must  needs  have  war 
to  destroy  millions  of  population  in  order  that 
civilization  might  not  lapse,  and  man  be  pressed 
far  back  toward  the  savage  stage.  The  Single 
Tax  therefore  fills  the  definition  of  the  term  com- 
monly used  in  science  as  "half  baked,"  a  body  of 
thought  containing  many  truths,  but  upon  the 
whole  erroneous.  4^ 


The  principle  with  which  Mr.  George  was  deal- 
ing embodies  a  vast  realm  of  sociology  which  he 
never  saw,  which,  indeed,  he  had  no  inkling  of, 
which  in  fact  could  not  have  been  acquired  in  his 
day  for  the  phenomena  did  not  exist  whereby  the 
analyst  might  discern  the  Laws  of  Nature  which 
run  through  the  human  scheme,  upon  which  society 
is  unconsciously  organized  and  upon  which  it  ex- 
ists. Great  basic  laws  seemed  to  Mr.  George  to 
be  erroneous  or  not  to  exist.  He  derided  the  Law 
of  Malthus,  that  human  population  increases  faster 
than  zvild  life  replenishes.  Malthus,  himself,  did 
not  fully  understand  this,  and  applied  it  to  erro- 
neous reasoning.  Mr.  George  scouted  the  prin- 
ciple of  population,  and  science  does  not  know 
today  that  the  human  scheme  is,  as  it  has  been 
from  the  beginning,  as  I  show  in  my  book,  the 
increase  of  population  to  unfold  the  mind. 

Mr.  George  says: 

"Whether  man  was  or  was  not  gradually 
developed  from  an  animal,  it  is  not  necessary  to 
inquire.  *  *  *  However  man  may  have  orig- 
inated, all  we  know  of  him  is  as  man — just  as 
he  is  now  to  be  found." 

He  then  proceeds  to  note  the  faculty  of  man 
"of  supplementing  what  nature  has  done  for  him 
by  what  he  does  for  himself."  This  is  as  far  as 
Mr.  George  goes  into  the  region  of  the  origin  of 
man ;  and  unless  this  be  recognized,  as  we  now  know 

47 


it  through  the  work  of  Darwin,  and  Wallace,  the 
Laws  that  moved  man  forward  from  the  ape  to 
civiHzation  cannot  be  understood,  and  without  an 
understanding  of  these  society  cannot  be  under- 
stood, and  without  understanding  society  the  basic 
cause  of  its  disturbance,  its  inharmony,  its  business 
hard  times,  industrial  unrest,  high  prices,  low 
wages,  poverty,  unemployment,  crime,  intemper- 
ance, armament,  war,  cannot  be  understood,  nor 
can  we  know  the  remedy  for  these  disorders. 

All  this  my  book  The  World  Question  and  Its 
Answer,  tells.  We  may  stop  the  present  war  in- 
stantly if  we  desire.  Not  through  force,  by  which 
means  we  have  been  trying  to  stop  it  for  years, 
and  by  which  means  the  war,  while  it  may  ulti" 
mately  be  stopped,  cannot  be  prevented  from  re- 
curring, much  as  those  who  favor  a  League  to 
Enforce  Peace  suppose — but  through  producing 
within  the  ^  allied  countries  a  sociological  status 
that  removes  all  cause  for  war,  and  automatically 
compels  Germany  to  disarm,  never  again  to  be 
able  to  put  on  armamant,  or  to  conduct  war. 

War  cannot  be  abolished  by  threats  of  force. 
All  efforts  to  do  this  by  a  combination  of  nations 
to  "police  the  world''  must  result  in  failure.  Hence 
the  undertaking  of  the  League  to  Enforce  Peace 
must  be  utterly  futile.  Were  it  possible  to  sup- 
press external  war  by  such  an  association,  it  would 
mean  that  war  would  fiercely  rage  within  the  sev- 


eral  nations.  And  if  the  League  scheme  be  ex- 
tended to  suppressing  civil  war,  and  an  enforced 
peace  were  actually  attained  and  held,  civilization 
would  sink  in  famine.  The  League  to  Enforce 
Peace  can  no  more  be  successful  than  was  the  Holy 
Alliance,  which — a  scheme  of  terrible  tyranny,  held 
Europe  in  peace  for  forty  years  only  to  end  in 
sporadic  war  everywhere  breaking  out  as  an  erup- 
tion. Those  well-meaning  people  who  now  are  con- 
cerning themselves  with  a  project  for  a  world 
peace  pact  are  dealing  with  sociological  forces 
which  they  do  not  understand,  and  which  will 
rend  any  structure  they  seek  to  erect  upon  that 
principle.  They  can  never  have  peace  with  priv- 
ilege, which  is  what  they  are  aiming  at,  though 
they  may  not  realize  it.  Only  freedom  and  equal 
right  can  abolish  war.  When  society  is  so  ad- 
justed, war  disappears  simply  because  a  casus 
belli  cannot  arise.  It  is  easy  to  stop  anything  you 
want  to  stop  by  force.  All  you  need  is  brawn 
enough  in  your  arm  to  land  the  blow.  But  the 
quality  of  such  blow  is  that  while  you  dent  the 
surface  at  your  point  of  contact  you  bulge  it  else- 
where. So  it  is  in  this  matter  of  war.  The  real 
problem  is  not  to  call  a  world  convention  and  fix 
up  a  treaty,  but  to  so  arrange  society  that  peace 
is  automatically  preserved.  The  way  to  do  this  is 
now  known,  and  we  have  only  to  inform  ourselves 
and  apply  it. 

49 


It  is  the  decree  of  nature  that  progress  of  the 
human  must  go  forward  with  peoples  grouped  in 
nations.  It  is  the  requisite  of  a  nation  that  its 
poHtical  powers  be  full,  free  and  autonomous.  The 
only  higher  rule  that  it  can  recognize  is  those 
political  and  economic  precepts  which  the  reason 
shows  to  rest  on  Natural  Law,  and  to  stand  for 
human  welfare. 

The  distinction  between  political  law  and  eco- 
nomic law  is  not  now  known.  People  think  that 
economic  law  stops  at  the  political  boundary;  that 
the  interests  of  a  people  are  best  served  where 
those  beyond  the  political  boundary  are  denied  in 
order  that  those  within  the  boundary  may  have 
(what  they  think)  is  larger  opportunity  to  serve 
society.  The  doctrine  is  wholly  wrong.  People 
can  only  serve  themselves  by  serving  others.  The 
office  of  a  political  boundary  is  not  to  divide  people 
economically,  for  in  the  scheme  of  co-operation 
it  matters  not  where  one  resides,  but  to  enable 
people  to  know  to  what  organization  they  owe  re- 
spect in  the  preservation  of  order.  National 
boundaries  are  hence  wholly  political;  in  no  sense 
are  they  economic.  In  political  rule  the  country 
must  be  self-determinate.  Never  can  a  single 
ruler  destride  the  world,  whether  as  kaiser  of  a 
world  nation  or  as  president  of  a  world  peace  par- 
liament. A  "United  States  of  the  World''  is  a 
myth.     At  the  root  of  this  principle  is  diversity 

5d 


as  against  homogenity.  Nature  moves  away  from 
uniformity  and  towards  variety  in  the  unfoldment 
of  the  mind.  The  only  uniformity  she  recognizes 
is  that  of  her  Laws  to  which  all  men,  when  they 
see  them,  yield  obedience.  And  these  Laws,  while 
everywhere  the  same,  allow  free  latitude  in  their 
subjects  to  the  utmost  hetrogenity. 

Upon  two  points  only  do  the  Call  System  and 
the  Single  Tax  resemble,  viz.:  Both  take  the  cost 
of  government  from  the  value  of  land  and  both 
eliminate  all  taxation  from  commodities,  structures 
or  service.  Aside  from  this  they  present  two  dif- 
ferent systems  of  philosophy,  or  rather  perhaps,  a 
philosophy  or  process  of  reasoning  from  erroneous 
premises  in  the  Single  Tax,  and  a  science,  to 
which  sociology  is  now  reduced,  in  the  Call  Sys- 
tem. It  would  be  impossible  in  the  limitations  of 
this  booklet  to  specify  these  differences,  but  a  few 
of  them,  those  bearing  upon  the  limited  field  of 
sociology  which  Mr.  George  treated,  may  be  en- 
umerated. 


51 


The  Fifteen  Points  of  Difference  Between  the 
Call  System  and  the  Single  Tax 

Let  us  now  summarize  and  note  the  differences 
between  the 

SINGLE  TAX  and    the         CALL   SYSTEM 


Denounces  private  property  in 
land. 

Asserts  value  in  land  is  the 
property  of  society. 

Does  not  know  how  value  of 
land  arises. 


Asserts  the  defect  in  society 
to  be  that  rent  is  not  distrib- 
uted equally  amongst  the  citi- 
enry  thereby  increasing  their  in- 
comes, but  is  allowed  to  de- 
volve upon  a  limited  group  of 
persons.  That  this  would  and 
should  be  cured  by  increasing 
the  incomes  of  the  citizens 
through  the  equal  and  free  dis- 
tribution  of   rent. 


Defends  private  property  in 
land. 

Declares  it  is  the  property  of 
the   State. 

Shows  by  analysis  that  it 
arises  through  the  unconscious 
co-operative  act  of  the  citizen 
while  producing  unit  value,  ef- 
fected through  the  existence  of 
order   maintained   by   the   State. 

Declares  the  defect  to  be  that 
opportunity  of  the  citizen  to 
co-operate  with  society  is  held 
down  by  holding  out  of  use  a 
vast  body  of  value  in  society 
(social  value),  and  by  the  ab- 
sence of  the  products  and  ser- 
vice which  full  use  of  such 
would  entail.  Declares  the  de- 
fect would  be  cured  by  raising 
wages,  and  by  enabling  busi- 
ness to  increase,  and  through 
increased  activities  to  enlarge 
incomes  therefrom,  and  by  low- 
ering prices;  all  of  which  is 
automatically  effected  by  the 
State  compelling  full  us^e  of 
valuable   land. 


The  citizen  uses  the  State  to  Denies    the    State    may    take 

take  all  property  in  land  to  dis-  more  than  its  support, 
tribute  to  himself  after  support- 
ing the  State. 

The  primary  object  is  to  se-  The  primary  object  is  to  se- 
cure incomes  for  the  citizen  cure  orderly  use  of  the  earth, 
from  rent.  The  support  of  the  The  support  of  the  State  is 
State  is   secondary.  secondary. 

52 


Does  not  regard  full  use  of 
valuable  land  as  an  object  but 
as  an  incident  which  might  oc- 
cur as  a  consequence  of  the 
landholder  being  "compelled  to 
restore  to  society  an  equivalent 
to  that  which  he  takes  from  so- 
ciety," namely,  the  whole  of 
rent  commensurate  to  the 
quantity  of  land  value  which 
he  possesses.  Does  not  be- 
lieve that  the  defect  in  pre- 
vailing social  arrangement  pro- 
ceeds from  land  not  being  or- 
derly used. 


The  full  efficient  use  of  val- 
uable land  is  orderly  use  of  the 
earth,  which  it  is  the  State's 
duty  to  compel  This  is  .at- 
tained through  the  State  taking 
such  an  annual  Call  from  the 
social  value  as  will  make  it  un- 
profitable for  the  landholder  to 
hold  it  at  less  than  its  full  use. 
He  would  be  compelled  to  fully 
use  it  or  let  some  one  else 
through  leasing  it,  fully  use  it. 
What  this  amount  may  be  is  a 
question  for  the  assessor  and 
board  of  equalization  dealing 
with  the  particular  neighbor- 
hood, acting  under  general  or- 
dinances to  be  framed. 


Offers  no  inducement  to 
owner  to  use  land  through 
sharing   in   its   value. 


Induces  use  of  land  through 
leaving  greater  part  of  value 
with  the  owner  of  land,  and 
setting  up  conditions  favorable 
to  each  person  acquiring  own- 
ership  of  land. 


By  reason  of  weakening  in- 
fluence upon  recipients  of  free 
gifts  of  incomes  derived  from 
rent,  hence  tending  to  relaxa- 
tion of  their  economic  exertion 
and  efficiency,  it  is  doubtful  if 
land  value  would  continuously 
increase.* 


Tremendously  increases  land 
value  (social  value),  which  be- 
comes nearly  all  profit  to  the 
landowner. 


*This  may  not  strike  the  reader  with  force.  It  is  nevertheless  true.  Not 
only  would  free  gifts  of  incomes  tend  to  relax  the  industrial  energies  of  people 
generally,  particularly  those  who  toil  on  the  physical  plane,  but,  as  we  have 
seen  recently,  unusually  high  wages  brought  about  by  the  war,  has  had  the 
effect  of  "laying  off"  lumberjacks  in  the  Northwest  and  negroes  in  the  South. 
Receiving  more  wages  in  two  or  three  days  th^n  they  have  heretofore  been  ac- 
customed to  receive  in  a  week,  and  with  jobs  easy  to  get,  they  work  but  two 
or  three  days  in  the  week.  A  hundred  years  ago  this  was  the  general  temper  of 
of  most  people.  Had  the  Call  System,  with  its  voluntary  high  wages  and 
abundance  of  jobs,  come  into  existence  at  that  time,  it  must  have  demoralized 
society.  Men  had  to  farther  advance  before  they  reached  a  stage  of  develop- 
ment where  they  could  receive  good  incomes  and  continue  work.  In  this  devel- 
opment prevailing  low  wages  and  scarcity  of  jobs,  with  the  labor  unions  enclos- 
ing industrj'  to  a  protected  few  and  forcing  high  wages  for  its  members,  all 
incidents  of  the  Protective  System,  were  needful  as  well  as  the  increase  of  many 
and  diverse  delights  and  comforts  in  society  which  money  can  buy — all  were 
requisite  to  provide  a  stimulus  to  drill  men  to  industry  and  keep  them  at  it. 
But  the  day  has  now  come  when  voluntary  high  wages  can  be  paid  to  the  mass 
of  men,  and  their  energies  be  thereby  increased,  not  diminished.  But  the  reverse 
would  be  the  case  were  any  free  fund  generally  distributed  amongst  them. 

53 


Limits  improvements  to  such 
as  a  tenant  would  make. 


Both  compels  and  induces  im- 
provements to  full  efficiency  of 
value. 


Wholly  effaces  the  borrow- 
ing power  of  the  landowner 
where  ihe  land  is  unimproved, 
and  lowers  it  to  the  security  of 
the  value  contained  in  the  struc- 
tures where  it  is  improved, 
thus  reducing  the  co-operative 
efficiency  of  the  landowner  as 
a  social  unit 

Demands  that  the  State  should 
own  and  operate  those  utilities 
which  employ  highways,  and 
proposes  that  the  service  of 
these  shall  be  free  to  the  citi- 
zen. 


Names  itself  Single  Tax,  im- 
porting the  sense  of  an  arbi- 
trary levy,  impost  or  burden. 


Mr.  George  unqualifiedly  con- 
demned private  property  in  land 
as  an  institution  which  has  at 
all  times  been  injurious  to  the 
human  race. 


Greatly  enlarges  his  borrow- 
ing power  through  increasing 
his  volume  of  value  contained 
in  the  land,  and  through  the 
plentitude  and  free  movement 
of  money,  and  the  general  con- 
fidence created  in  the  business 
world,  it  becomes  easy  for  him 
to  borrow  at  low  interest  rates. 

Demands  the  State  rigidly 
withhold  its  hands  from  the 
operation  of  utilitarian  indus- 
try, which  is  the  sole  right  of 
the  citizen.  And  that  all  high- 
ways shall  be  open  to  the  use 
of  citizens  under  general  laws 
and  upon  equal  terms;  and  that 
mergers  of  competing  oper- 
ators of  these  industries  be 
prohibited. 

Not  a  tax  at  all,  and  in  no 
sense  answering  to  the  defini- 
tion of  a  tax;  but  is  a  call  made 
by  the  State  upon  its  own  prop- 
erty, similar  to  the  call  of  a 
bank  on  an  outstanding  loan. 

Shows  it  is  necessary  and 
wise  and  may  be  made  precise- 
ly just.  Its  prevailing  phase, 
designated  as  the  Protective 
Spirit,  has  been  imperatively 
required  in  the  great  scheme  of 
human  progress.  It  was  the 
method  which  nature  took  to 
get  civilized  man  over  the 
earth,  through  making  land  in 
society  scarce  and  high,  driv- 
ing him  forth  to  the  wild  and 
unoccupied  spaces  of  the  earth 
to  get  cheap  land.  The  spirit 
or  system  is  now  obsolete. 


54 


Realizes  that  the  prevailing 
system  causes  constant  increase 
of  poverty  and  believes  that 
unless  the  influence  in  society 
which  affects  this  be  checked 
civilization  will  lapse. 


Shows  that  prevailing  system 
produces  constant  increase  of 
dis-cooperation  of  the  units  of 
society,  throwing  an  ever  en- 
larging margin  into  famine. 
Shows,  however,  that  this  can 
never  cause  lapse  of  civiliza- 
tion because  war  automatically 
ensues,  which  at  once  effects 
full  co-operation  of  society,  and 
tries  to  make  this  permanent  in 
the  peace  following  war,  tend- 
ing to  produce  the  Call  System 
through  the  medium  of  force. 
But  that  in  order  for  society  to 
hold  on  in  peace  to  the  co-op- 
eration which  war  devolves,  it 
is  necessary  that  the  mind  rec- 
ognize Nature's  effort  through 
war  to  make  society  econom- 
ically whole  and  effect  the  nec- 
essary legislation  to  that  end; 
otherwise  war  will  again  trans- 
pire, for  war  always  closes 
bearing  the  seeds  of  future 
wars.  The  World  Question  and 
Its  Answer  shows  the  way 
whereby  through  legislation 
permanent  full  co-operation 
may  be  effected. 


55 


In  thus  showing  some  of  the  mistakes  of  the 
Single  Tax,  and  the  impossibihty  of  its  ever  get- 
ting into  existence  as  the  working  structure  of  a 
nation,  I  am  conscious  of  the  blow  which  may  be 
dealt  that  movement.  I  have  long  seen  the  errors 
of  the  Single  Tax,  but  have  held  my  peace  because 
I  had  not  worked  to  its  conclusion  the  problem 
of  sociology,  and  until  I  was  able  to  present  the 
true  solution  to  the  problem  I  was  loath  to  lift 
my  hand  against  a  proposed  reform — the  only  one 
existing  aimed  at  rational  understanding  of  socio- 
logical disturbance,  and  the  only  hope  of  millions 
of  serious  and  conservative  people  the  world 
around,  who  have  their  hearts  set  upon  the  attain- 
ment of  a  society  in  which  all  may  be  fed  in  abund- 
ance and  in  harmony. 

That  problem,  as  I  say,  has  now  been  worked 
out  and  we  know  the  remedy.  In  twenty-four 
hours  the  Congress  of  the  United  States  could  by 
the  passage  of  a  simple  measure,  and  repealing  a 
bevy  of  pernicious  laws,  change  the  whole  condi- 
tion which  other  nations  must,  for  reasons  I  show 
in  the  book,  immediately  adopt,  and  war  shall  then 
be  abolished  from  the  earth  forever.  I  do  not 
pretend  or  believe  that  the  introduction  of  the 
system  will  close  the  war  now  prevailing.  I  think 
that  so  outraged  and  overwhelmed  with  horror 
have  the  non-Teutonic  peoples  of  the  world  be- 
come at  the  methods  of  warfare  of  Germany  that 

56 


they  will  never  lay  down  arms  until  the  few  indi- 
viduals who  comprise  the  German  militaristic 
group  are  deposed  and  effaced.  I  do  not  believe 
that  the  governments  and  peoples  of  the  allied 
nations  will,  under  any  circumstances,  consent  to 
dwell  with  this  group  in  any  relations  whatever 
save  those  of  war.  Had  they  conducted  their  war- 
fare after  the  rules  of  civilized  nations,  I  have  no 
doubt  that  the  war  would  be  closed  immediately 
the  Call  System  is  recognized  and  applied.  But 
all  that  the  Call  could  now  do  would  be  to 
strengthen  the  Allies,  through  revealing  to  them 
an  immense  supply  of  funds,  the  taking  of  which 
does  not  hurt  business. 

Under  the  Call  System  in  place  of  the  famine, 
the  oppression  and  agonies  of  the  prevailing  sys- 
tem there  automatically  supervenes  a  sociological 
condition  which,  as  I  have  repeatedly  said,  I  can 
find  no  other  name  for  than  a  heaven  on  earth. 
It  is  a  state  of  things  in  which  there  is  more  jobs 
than  there  are  men;  more  offers  of  business  than 
business  people  can  accept;  where  wages  are  high 
for  lack  of  men,  and  prices  are  low  with  abundance 
of  goods;  wherein  there  cannot  be  a  strike  or  a 
lockout ;  where  crime,  intemperance,  insanity,  many 
diseases,  are  at  a  minimum  and  tend  to  disappear, 
not  to  increase  as  now.  Wherein  every  man  mov- 
ing ever  so  selfishly  towards  his  own  ends,  is  but 
aiding  his  neighbor  and  cannot  injure  him.     You 

57 


may  call  this  state  of  society  what  you  like,  it  is 
certainly  far  different  from  the  present  society, 
which  I  call  that  of  the  Protective  Spirit,  which 
system,  however,  has,  as  I  show,  been  utterly 
necessary  for  the  human  race,  since  it  could  never 
have  reached  present  civilization  without  it,  but 
which  is  now  obsolete  and  must  be  abolished,  if 
war  is  to  cease. 

And  in  the  working  out  and  elucidation  of  this 
problem  I  cannot  withhold  expressions  of  my  deep 
gratitude  to  Mr.  George  for  the  aid  I  have  received 
from  his  labors.  His  celebrated  book.  Progress 
and  Poverty,  was  written  not  a  block  away  from 
where  I  now  write ;  it  has  swung  around  the  world, 
and  his  name  is  familiar  to  distant  peoples  to 
whom  the  name  of  San  Francisco  is 'known  chiefly 
as  his  home.  Surely  one  who  has  done  so  much 
for  this  city  is  entitled  to  earnest  inquiry  into  the 
merits  of  the  work  he  has  performed.  This  I  have 
sought  to  give,  and  to  locate  his  place  and  achieve" 
ment  in  the  successive  steps  through  which  the 
capital  problem  of  society  has  been  compassed  and 
its  answer  found.  His  share  in  the  work  has  not 
been  small,  his  contribution  has  been  no  meager 
portion.  History,  in  its  summing  up,  will  give 
to  him  his  due  reward,  that  public  gratitude  for 
the  possession  of  a  sincere  and  ardent  mind,  pro- 
foundly committed  to  the  public  welfare,  who 
boldly  showed  forth  such  of  truth  as  he  saw,  and 

58 


who  made  easier  the  path  to  the  ultimate  goal, 
which  he  brought  nearer  to  the  reach  of  those  who 
should  follow. 


SO 


iV'r.:' 


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246  Russ  Building, 
San  Francisco,  Cal. 

Enclosed  find  $ for copies  at 

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one  cover,  of 


THE    WORLD    QUESTION    AND    ITS    ANSWER 

THE  SOLUTION  OF  THE  PROBLEM  OF  WAR 

By  John  E.  Bennett 

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